“The age of the corpse?” Nico offered. “If you dig up my grandmother for her gold rings, you are a vile criminal. If it is my great-great-great-great grandmother, you are an antiquarian.”
“I wonder how many greats is the tipping point. I suppose that’s it, but I find it quite discomfiting how people regard mummies as objects, or ingredients, just because they’re old. Look at Egyptian brown. Colourmen are quite happy to debate which part of the mummy gives the richest brown, without any—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Nico said. “What did you say?”
“Egyptian brown. Mummy brown, people sometimes call it, or caput mortuum.”
Nico’s Latin was as one might expect of his patchwork education, but he could do that one. “Dead man’s head? Are you telling me you make apaint— Oh, you are not serious. Tell me you are not serious.”
“I’m afraid so,” Titus said. “I don’t sell it myself. It is much loved for glazing layers, to give muscles and skin the right tone, but it ages very poorly, and I find the finish unsatisfactory. Not to mention—”
“It is made of dead people!”
“That, yes. I did make up a few batches as an apprentice when my master purchased a forearm, and it was a horrible process. He believed in using the bones and bandages too. It felt more like witchcraft than anything.”
“That is disgusting,” Nico said with his whole heart. “Even by the standards of paint, disgusting. How many paintingsmade by corpse-colour have I seen? Oh my God, my brown coat!”
“That will be a vegetable dye,” Titus assured him. “Egyptian brown is used for oil paintings.”
“Hmph. I could not enjoy a painting made of the dead.”
“You’ve probably seen a few already. This is always the problem with knowing too much,” Titus said. “Something might be quite lovely, and then you find out more about it and it starts to seem rather sordid or unpleasant. Like Scheele’s green, or…” He groped for an example. “Sausages.”
“Sausages?”
“I’m saying, it’s often better not to ask too much, for one’s peace of mind. One might be better off not knowing.”
That hit hard. Nico could only nod, an imitation man in an imitation tomb, hoping to stay unknown.
Chapter Twelve
They emerged into daylight with some relief after a highly educational couple of hours. “Luncheon,” Titus said firmly. “And then perhaps that ice?”
They lunched well at Saunders’ Oyster-rooms, taking a table by the first-floor window to watch the world walk down Piccadilly and make observations of varying charity about its appearance. Titus enjoyed people very well when he was at a remove from them, Nico thought; his shoulders were visibly relaxed now. Afterwards they strolled down to Berkeley Square to try Gunter’s famous strawberry ices, perfect in their cold, smooth sweetness. Nico felt the chill of the ice sliding down his throat, and felt almost as much Titus’s gaze on his neck as he swallowed.
The ices fortified them for the Panorama, of which thePicture of Londonclaimed thatthe illusion is so complete, that the spectator may imagine he is present at the display of the real scenery. Nico had regarded that claim, like any other made in advertising literature, with extreme scepticism, but he found himself wrong: The experience was stunning. They stood on a platform surroundedby immense paintings of Venice, its canals and houses stretching away in all directions, and stared their fill in silence.
At last Titus drew in a deep breath. “Good heavens. Goodheavens. I have seen a couple of Canaletto paintings reproduced, but I did not imagine anything like this. Have you ever visited Venice? Or Italy?”
“Never, though I spent a great deal of time in Nice, in the south of France, which has a flavour of Italy about it.”
Titus inhaled rapturously. “Tell me.”
What Nico mostly remembered of Nice was hiding under a table in a tavern where the sawdust smelled of piss while three enraged men kicked the daylights out of his father. He cast about for slightly more inspiring memories, and recounted them as they headed on to the Strand and Pidcock’s Museum.
That had a less awe-inspiring exterior than the Egyptian Hall, being merely a set of rooms above Exeter ’Change, but the contents were of a nature to appeal to the schoolchild in every soul, and worth the extortionate half crown a head charged for admission, especially since Titus paid. It held an astonishing selection of stuffed animals: lions, leopards, and a royal tyger from Bengal; hyenas and wolves; a baboon standing almost as tall as Nico himself, and a pair of ostriches that were even taller. There was a boa constrictor that held them both in rapt horror at its monstrous size, and the promised kanguroos, which Nico contemplated for several increasingly outraged minutes.
“I don’t believe it,” he said at last. “Look at these things! A giant mouse with the shoes of a pantomime clown: It is a patent fraud. How would it walk?”
“It hops, sir,” the attendant said, and did a little bounce to illustrate, with his hands held up absurdly by his chest. Nico stared open-mouthed at this flagrant insult to his intelligence. Titus hid behind the baboon, shoulders shaking.
They finished their visit in the skin-crawling entomological collection, with spiders, scorpions, huge centipedes, and beetles of remarkable shades.
“They are probably all poisonous,” Titus remarked. “Or venomous. Or both.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s the bright colours. I read that bright colours are Nature’s warning sign. Like wasps, you know. Red or yellow stripes say,Watch out; I am dangerous; stay away from me.”